Malazan Wiki talk:Layout Guide
I am proposing that we have a separate lay-out guide for characters, mostly to try and make the articles as spoiler free as possible. I have used the basic lay-out guide and made notes of what might be added/taken away for a character lay-out guide. Proposed changes in italics: Articles should have sections in this order if those sections are required for the article. (Title tag - Usually not required. Used to alter title (ie; to italicise it).) - in the interest of uniformity, I would omit this one 1.Maintenance templates 2.Link for identical page where disambiguation page is not possible (see Apsalar) 3.Infobox 4.Opening quote - A simple quote about the subject of the article. 5.Summary - short section to describe character at the time of first appearance (avoid adding spoiler info from later books) 6.Main article - in publication order with content displayed under relevant book headings (again avoid spoilers) 7.History - adding character history summary below book content rather than at the top to avoid spoiler info 8.Trivia - For supporting information that could not normally go in a Malazan Wiki article. 9.Speculations - For speculations about the character including links to forum pages on the topic (Cover gallery) - not needed (Appearances A list of all the publications that where this person, item, place, etc has appeared or been mentioned.) - I would omit this one as it seems surplus when info is presented under book headings. 10.Notes and references Should have the template in it already and it would be fantastic if you could add a reference. (If you are not sure about formatting, add it in brackets and plain language to the information and someone will come along and convert it) 11.See also - For related articles that are not otherwise linked to in the article. 12.External links 13.Navigation box -See here for a list: Navigation templates. 14.Categories 15.Interwiki links - Such as links to the article in other languages. ... and a couple of general notes: *Only use spoiler tags very sparsely, i.e. the death of a major character or a totally incredible life changing bit of information. Otherwise, having info under relevant book headings should be warning enough. *Fan art images should be displayed top to bottom in the order in which they are uploaded, unless artists in question have amongst themselves decided on another order. Please note that not all articles use every section. I am sure that there are things I have forgotten and things which might be addressed differently. I am looking forward to everyone's feedback. Egwene of the Malazan Empire (talk) 22:34, January 20, 2015 (UTC) : I'd be happy to apply that to articles that I edit/make. My only issue is with Infoboxes - they sometimes contain spoilers. I've tried playing around with collapsible elements to see if I can make them do it like the table on the GotM but no luck so far. : So the main change with this layout would be the History section, which effectively replaces what - in many articles - is currently the first section currently? Also when you say the first appearance, is that to be taken literally to be safe or with some leeway depending on the article? : Also a quick question on the appearance/descriptions. Some articles have a description in their text (generally quoting the books) while others have it in an infobox, when available (though I've read a few descriptions that would be awkward to translate into an infobox so I can see why they aren't), and others have both. Should there be uniformity about how this is displayed or should it be left how it is? On one hand uniformity is nice, on the other what's there currently works. Just figured while style is being addressed I may as well bring it up. Moranth Munitions (talk) 01:17, January 21, 2015 (UTC) ::I agree with your point about the infoboxes. If they were collapsible, that would be great. Good luck with that! ::The history section is often a major source of spoiler info, especially for some of the main characters, so moving that would make sense. When I say 'first appearance', that doesn't have to be set in stone. There should always be room for common sense if something else works better. Again, I have come across intros which give away major plot details from some of the later books, hence I feel we need to make sure people keep it to non-spoiler info. ::I have made the same observation about where character descriptions are. I am not too worried about it. The main thing is that the information is there at all. I suppose the ideal would be for the infobox to contain the most obvious bits like eye colour, hair colour, size etc... and for the main article to have the same info but in more detail. ::Egwene of the Malazan Empire (talk) 00:03, January 22, 2015 (UTC) ::: I've managed to hack together a new template for a collapsible infobox, it's not the most elegant solution, probably overcomplex if there's shortcuts for some stuff I did, but it works/is useable. Not too bad for a few hours here or there and minimal prior knowledge, though I swear messing up brackets gets me in all of the (few) computer languages I've tried to use. I'm sure there's better ways to do it and ways to make that one look nicer, but I figure it'll do for now. ::: On the other points though, that seems reasonable. I guess if there's general concensus it'll just be one edit at a time. Moranth Munitions (talk) 04:07, January 22, 2015 (UTC) ::::In general I think that even something that is seldom used - actually, especially something that is seldom used - should be in the layout guide. This goes for the Title tag and Cover gallery. When I wrote the Layout Guide I didn't want to have articles sub-headinged by book title, but as this is so widespread I will concede on this. Note that under the Main article section there is already a place for history called Biography. I made the Layout Guide very comprehensive in scope for a reason and I don't think anything should be messed with other than, perhaps, the Main article section. Speculation does detract from the overall theme of an encyclopaedia I think, but I wouldn't object to some of the more popular theories being placed under a sub-heading in the Trivia section. Re the Apsalar situation, a good catch. I didn't think of that; I'll make a template for it. ::::Regarding spoilers. Fighting spoilers is an unwinnable battle. It also goes against the grain of an encyclopaedia. Furthermore I think it is technically very challenging. To spoiler protect even ten medium to large pages is a difficult task in itself - to cover the whole wiki - a near impossibility. And anything less than total de-spoilerisation of the wiki is likely to result in complaints of spoilers. I just don't think it is worth the insane workload to pull off. A while back when this was being discussed I looked around other wikis to see their policies. I looked at about 30 comparable wikis and only one tried to control spoilers and even then they only gave a per book warning (not too difficult with only four books). Spoilers and wikis are fundamentally incompatible and the difficulty of the problem scales with an increasing number of sources (books) and wiki pages. You probably don't know this but there was once a third Malazan wiki (bizarrely called "Hood's Balls"). It had a fancy spoiler system, allow me to link you to it now: hoodsballs.com http://forum.malazanempire.com/topic/14172-hoodsballscom-a-malazan-wiki/ source ::::I will say it once more: Fighting spoilers is an unwinnable battle. ::::--[[User:Jade Raven|'Jade Raven']] (talk to me) 00:39, January 23, 2015 (UTC) I agree with you, Jade Raven, that it is impossible to be totally spoiler free, but I do think that it would be great to make the site as user friendly for new readers as possible. If that can be achieved by making a few simple changes, don't you think it's worth it? I totally agree that we should not use additional spoiler warnings other than in very exceptional circumstances - i.e. the death of a major, major character or should the revelation come that the Crippled God was another Paran sibling. It isn't just about spoilers anyway but about displaying information in the most useful way. Most people want to know who is who and what happened when. By putting information under book headings it displays information in the proper timeline. It also means there is at least a minimal amount of source reference. I am not suggesting to alter the lay-out guide for articles in general in any way but feel that character pages warrant a slightly different approach. Problems are mostly arising from the publication of the prequels. There is a lot of information in the books which then gets a different interpretation in the prequels. I know the biography in a wiki would normally be in the beginning, but then, they don't normally deal with people who have lived over thousands of years and who themselves have forgotten or intentionally distorted most of their own history. A lot of things which were put in biographies turn out to be different. I am sure the next couple of books will turn even more assumptions on the head. I suggested the omission of title tag and cover gallery because the former I have only see used once for a character and the later I have not seen used at all. But no harm done leaving them in, I guess. I am still in favour of omitting the 'Appearances' section. For many of the main characters, that list is absolutely endless, plus it simply doubles up on information which should be contained in the text. Egwene of the Malazan Empire (talk) 12:37, January 23, 2015 (UTC) :The whole point of the Layout Guide is list for every contingency. If you remove a section you should ideally delete every instance of it on the wiki and never use them henceforth. In my estimation only veteran editors will bother to check the Layout Guide, in that case it should be as detailed as possible. If you want a beginner's guide (with say just Summary, Book Titles, Notes and references and Categories) I think it should be on a separate page along with simple wiki markup instructions, etc don't necessarily think that a beginner's page needs to be done though. The cover gallery is used, check out Gardens of the Moon. Also Ragstopper (ship names are always italicised in English). :I am resigned to having the Main article section re-done, however, I ask that you inspect it closely before discarding each part. Yes this may well make the Appearances section redundant. --[[User:Jade Raven|'Jade Raven']] (talk to me) 11:11, January 25, 2015 (UTC) ::Sorry if there is a misunderstanding here. I was suggesting to omit those sections only if we were to implement my proposal of an additional lay-out guide specifically for characters. Obviously, for book pages the cover gallery is relevant and should be there. As for omitting the 'title tags', again, for ships, yes (I had not realized they are always italicized in English) but would we need them for characters? ::I know you didn't mention it as a 'let's do it', Jade Raven, but a beginners 'how to get started' might be quite a good idea. When I had a look at the lay-out guide before I started editing, the long list of instructions and unfamiliar expressions nearly put me off completely. I eventually looked at existing pages instead for guidance. That is how I came to use book headings. I think it was Tool's page which I thought you mentioned somewhere as being your example page which I then based my own editing on. Same with a lot of other stuff. I looked at what was already there and copied the codes until I eventually worked out how to build them up myself. ::This Wikia is totally amazing overall, however the lack of source references does let the site down. Allocated book headings are better than nothing. They hopefully discourage total random postings from memory and help users to find sections which they would like to read in more detail. ::Going back to the purpose of this discussion - are you proposing that rather than having an additional guide for character pages we modify the current lay-out guide for the main section? Egwene of the Malazan Empire (talk) 21:26, January 25, 2015 (UTC) Any more thoughts on the above? In addition to the above questions about lay-out, it would be good to have a think about the lay-out of the book pages. At the moment, there is a lot of doubling up with chapter summaries being on the main page as well as the individual chapter pages. Same with the Dramatis Personae. Personally, my preference would be to only have the plot summary on the main page and to put the chapter info-box on the left hand side, underneath that summary. If we could on top of that, make the info box three columns wide, that would be even better. Egwene of the Malazan Empire (talk) 12:55, February 22, 2015 (UTC) :Check out Gardens of the Moon, it displays my thoughts on the matter. I think there should be "book" summaries there and greatly expanded chapter summaries on their own pages. The idea is that you get an overview of the book and then branch off to individual chapter pages if you want more detail. Changing to triple column infoboxes would be a lot of work. :Sorry I didn't get back to you, but yeah I think there should be just one page that explains the layout, or alternatively two pages, one with incredible detail and the other that is very simple (perhaps incorporated in a revamped ). The Manual of Style already has a basic layout order. The example pages are the most important part of the Layout Guide I think. --[[User:Jade Raven|'Jade Raven']] (talk to me) 10:16, February 23, 2015 (UTC) ::It would be good to have a few sample pages which have everything in them, so to speak, at the very top of the Layout guide. In effect, they would serve as a quick guide to the beginner. Some targeted work on getting those sample pages sewn up might be an idea. GotM is obviously the book one. What about characters though? Which ones would you regard as the shining examples, or ones we could easily give that perfect polish? ::Egwene of the Malazan Empire (talk) 13:33, February 23, 2015 (UTC) :::Um, they are already listed in the Layout Guide. --[[User:Jade Raven|'Jade Raven']] (talk to me) 09:55, February 24, 2015 (UTC) ::::My suggestion was to have a short list of recommended pages at the very top (without the details). And to have more than one or two examples for characters.Egwene of the Malazan Empire (talk) 13:36, February 24, 2015 (UTC) Speculation Regarding the section header I'm pretty sure speculations should be speculation in this case (not plural). It's very rarely a countable noun and in this use-case I don't think it is countable (pluralisable). -- 23:48, December 31, 2016 (UTC)